First Team

Isma wants winning run

Isma wants the Jambos to hit the ground running this season and build up an all-important winning mentality.

Isma Goncalves believes winning tonight against Elgin City can help Hearts build up a winning mentality to take into the new season.

The Jambos face the Black and Whites this evening at Borough Briggs in the first competitive game of the new campaign, and the Portuguese striker thinks his side has already shown in pre-season that they are ready to hit the ground running.

Speaking at his pre-match press conference, he said: “It is important to win, to get used to winning. We finished the league last year with a lot of losses.

“It’s good when you win and win and win, you get used to it. It becomes normal then.

“I think we are ready. We’ve been working hard. The coach also thinks we are ready. You can see, I think, we are better than last year. So I think we are ready.

“It’s helped that that we’ve been training for one month in the camp, inside and outside.

“You can see it in the games when we’ve played against Linfield and Newcastle, I think out of these games we take a lot of good things which means the training is working.’

A new look Hearts side will take to the pitch tonight after head coach Ian Cathro brought in six players over the summer.

Isma points to a different atmosphere this season as being the main reason for confidence being high, and has revealed he will put team results first over personal glory.

“It’s a different atmosphere inside with the new players coming in, and they’ve brought a lot of quality also,” he said. “You can see in the training that there’s more quality and the people are more relaxed and more calm.

“We feel ready to go to competition. We’ve spoken all about this with the coaching staff and everybody’s ready.

“I want to help the team as much as I can and score goals. That’s it. The most important thing is the team, the team goals, and then comes my goals.

“Every season is different. You can score 20 goals in one season and in the other you score five. I think I know the league and I know the clubs better now.”